Subject:Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

It seemed like it used to take almost a year or even longer for movies to come out on VHS back in the 90s. Now with DVD/blu-ray, it usually seems to be within a few months of theatrical release.

For example, Hocus Pocus was released in theaters on July 16, 1993, but didn't come out on VHS until September 9, 1994. That's 14 months O_O

The Nightmare Before Christimas came out on October 29, 1993 but didn't get VHS release until September 30, 1994.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:loki 13on07/18/12 at 3:24 pm

I think it simply has to do with secondary theaters, or lack there of. After a films original release in primary theaters it ran the gamut of secondary theaters, smaller and cheaper venues. Since VCRs were a novelity not many peoplehad them and the film can make more money in the secondary market than the VHS market. Now pretty much everyhousehold has at least one DVD player or Netflix or something of the sort so the secondary theater is now non existent.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Howardon07/18/12 at 8:06 pm

Some films were out in theaters but It took about 6 months for it to come to Videotape.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:snozberrieson07/18/12 at 9:57 pm

I think it simply has to do with secondary theaters, or lack there of. After a films original release in primary theaters it ran the gamut of secondary theaters, smaller and cheaper venues. Since VCRs were a novelity not many peoplehad them and the film can make more money in the secondary market than the VHS market. Now pretty much everyhousehold has at least one DVD player or Netflix or something of the sort so the secondary theater is now non existent.

This is pretty spot on...... there also could've been an issue with the technology used to transfer the movies to vhs and to manufacture all those tapes.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:whistledogon07/20/12 at 4:35 pm

Must've been a lengthy process to transfer to VHS. When DVD First launched, when a movie came out, it was only released to DVD. The VHS release didn't come out months later.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Foo Baron07/20/12 at 10:20 pm

I think it simply has to do with secondary theaters, or lack there of. After a films original release in primary theaters it ran the gamut of secondary theaters, smaller and cheaper venues. Since VCRs were a novelity not many peoplehad them and the film can make more money in the secondary market than the VHS market. Now pretty much everyhousehold has at least one DVD player or Netflix or something of the sort so the secondary theater is now non existent.

That, and the rental market.

MPAA had a pretty crazy system of distribution. It still does - but it was even crazier back in the day.

If you wanted to watch a movie, you watched it in the theater. But not the secondary theaters. Only the big chain theaters had paid enough to MPAA to get the first-run movies and they didn't want the secondary theaters as competition.

If you wanted to watch it at home, you had to wait until it was out of the theater, and largely out of the secondary theaters, before you could get the VHS. Because the secondary theater chains had paid MPAA money to make sure that they didn't have to deal with the video store as competition.

Then you could rent the tape from a video rental store, or you could buy the tape at $79.99, but only if you were able to pay the ("for rental only") price that the rental store paid. The rental store didn't want you buying the tape for $40 and watching it yourself, because the rental stores had paid MPAA for the right to rent the tape to other people (and at $5/night, had to rent it to at least 16 people to make that $80 cost break even), and they didn't want the competition.

Only after that fourth stage - when the rental stores' contracts had expired - would MPAA permit a video retail store the right to sell anyone a video for the "normal" retail price of $30-40 or so. (Because that sale came with a license that permitted you to watch the video, but not to rent your copy to your friends. See above re: competition.)

The history of home video rentals is a morbidly fascinating walkthrough of MPAA's business model. The timeframes have gotten a lot shorter, but the business model has been unchanged for 40 years: it's always been based on charging various levels of middlemen various amounts of money in exchange for temporary monopolies on distribution.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:mach!ne_he@don07/21/12 at 12:39 pm

That, and the rental market.

MPAA had a pretty crazy system of distribution. It still does - but it was even crazier back in the day.

If you wanted to watch a movie, you watched it in the theater. But not the secondary theaters. Only the big chain theaters had paid enough to MPAA to get the first-run movies and they didn't want the secondary theaters as competition.

If you wanted to watch it at home, you had to wait until it was out of the theater, and largely out of the secondary theaters, before you could get the VHS. Because the secondary theater chains had paid MPAA money to make sure that they didn't have to deal with the video store as competition.

Then you could rent the tape from a video rental store, or you could buy the tape at $79.99, but only if you were able to pay the ("for rental only") price that the rental store paid. The rental store didn't want you buying the tape for $40 and watching it yourself, because the rental stores had paid MPAA for the right to rent the tape to other people (and at $5/night, had to rent it to at least 16 people to make that $80 cost break even), and they didn't want the competition.

Only after that fourth stage - when the rental stores' contracts had expired - would MPAA permit a video retail store the right to sell anyone a video for the "normal" retail price of $30-40 or so. (Because that sale came with a license that permitted you to watch the video, but not to rent your copy to your friends. See above re: competition.)

The history of home video rentals is a morbidly fascinating walkthrough of MPAA's business model. The timeframes have gotten a lot shorter, but the business model has been unchanged for 40 years: it's always been based on charging various levels of middlemen various amounts of money in exchange for temporary monopolies on distribution.

What's interesting now is watching how the broad availability, and cheapening cost, of high speed internet that has made online video so accessible is also totally changing the rental business as we knew it. I grew up in the absolute peak years of the old brick-and-mortar video rental stores, and they became so ubiquitous that even our extremely small town of 3,000 had a Blockbuster.

Today, not only has that Blockbuster closed, but I've noticed other rental businesses even in much larger cities around here closed as well. 15 or 20 years from now, they may be completely a thing of the past.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:MarkMc1990on07/21/12 at 1:17 pm

I think it will be sooner than 15-20 years.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:mach!ne_he@don07/21/12 at 1:22 pm

I think it will be sooner than 15-20 years.

You're probably right. I was just thinking about the older generation (like my grandparents) who still don't have a computer even now. As long as they're around, the chain stores will always have some customers.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Inlandsvägen1986on07/21/12 at 3:42 pm

I also remember that since this was the case in Germany, too. It was even the case in the early 2000's: I remember when SpiderMan 1 was in the cinemas in mid 2002, it took half a year - the last VHS BTW that I have bought in my life in January 2003.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Howardon07/21/12 at 7:50 pm

What's interesting now is watching how the broad availability, and cheapening cost, of high speed internet that has made online video so accessible is also totally changing the rental business as we knew it. I grew up in the absolute peak years of the old brick-and-mortar video rental stores, and they became so ubiquitous that even our extremely small town of 3,000 had a Blockbuster.

Today, not only has that Blockbuster closed, but I've noticed other rental businesses even in much larger cities around here closed as well. 15 or 20 years from now, they may be completely a thing of the past.

Now you can watch videos via internet. We have great technology.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Inlandsvägen1986on07/22/12 at 3:25 am

Now you can watch videos via internet. We have great technology.

Of course it's great technology. However it was also great to find a VHS tape under the christmas tree. Now that was something really exciting and that would be boring today.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Howardon07/22/12 at 7:44 am

Of course it's great technology. However it was also great to find a VHS tape under the christmas tree. Now that was something really exciting and that would be boring today.

Back in those days when you didn't have the internet, VHS tapes ruled the 1980's.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Inlandsvägen1986on07/22/12 at 8:21 am

Back in those days when you didn't have the internet, VHS tapes ruled the 1980's.

Watching movies online in a quality which is near DVD was not even possible when the internet was available. At least when you had a very slow connection, which was still common well into the 00's.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:yelimsexaon07/23/12 at 7:50 am

Good point on explaining why VHS tapes in the early years of the format where marked up over their normal retail, as a means for the video rental stores for staying competitive. As a result, many of the best-selling VHS tapes throughout the '80s are not actual theatrical releases due to their high price, but instead various made-for-video tapes, such as aerobics, children's shows, educational programs, and some classic movies. However, once people started to widely record movies from their TV on tapes on blank tape by purchasing them at a much lower price ($10 per tape) and as second-run theaters declined, more and more people accepted recent feature movies on video, which is why it is much easier to find '90s movies on VHS than it is to find '80s movies. Around the time DVD took off, the price of a VHS had dwindled to around $15-$20 for a recent release. It was the studio's gain in expense of the rental chains when the video prices gradually came down. It's ridiculous nowadays how cheap VHS tapes are nowadays at second-hand thrift stores, as I've seen them for as cheap as 25 cents a piece at one store.

Subject:Re: Why did films used to take so long to be released on VHS?

Written By:Foo Baron07/25/12 at 8:45 pm

Watching movies online in a quality which is near DVD was not even possible when the internet was available. At least when you had a very slow connection, which was still common well into the 00's.

And although rewritable CDs (and DVDs) have existed for a long time, the hardware and CPU requirements to capture and encode analog video in real-time (either to VCD-quality for a CD-RW, much less analog-to-MPEG2 for DVD-quality) were prohibitively expensive in the early 90s. Which was why you never really saw them take off. And which was just fine with the movie industry.

When the first DVRs came out in the late-90s, MPAA greeted them with the same enthusiasm they did the VCR. And how enthused was that?

"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.

...

"There is going to be a VCR avalanche. Exports of VCRs from Japan totaled 2.57 million units in 1981. No. 2, the United States is the biggest market. No. 3, February 1982, which is the latest data, shows the imports to the United States are up 57 percent over 1981. This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here.

Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that the VCR is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace.

Now, is this all? Is it going to get any bigger? Well, I assure you it is. Here is the weekly Variety, Wednesday, March 10. Headline, "Sony Sees $400 Billion Global Electronics Business by the Decade's End," $400 billion by the decade's end. In 1981, Mr. Chairman, this United States had a $5.3 billion trade deficit with Japan on electronic equipment alone. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.

Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the VCR. One of the Japanese lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the VCR -- well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don't know. He certainly is not MGM's lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had.

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

- MPAA head Jack Valenti, 1982 Congressional Testimony.

30 years later, and despite MPAA consistently making more money in the aftermarket (rentals and sales of VHS tapes, DVDs, Blu-Ray, and even streaming royalties) than it ever did from first-run movies, it still hasn't learned a damn thing. And that's the real reason it took movies so long to be released on VHS 30 years ago. And why DVDs had region codes. And why newer Blu-Ray discs may or may not work depending on whether your new player accepts the firmware "upgrade" embedded on every disc.